Local Paper for London: Get your Own (Recycled) Paper Back

We covered the brilliant work of Bioregional before, such as the BedZED eco-housing project and the Laundry, a paper recycling system. Bioregional has developed another recycling scheme at a more local scale, specifically for London and has also applied it to Surrey so far. Local Paper for London is based on the simple principle of cycling the paper locally.

How does it work? (graph after the jump) The company sends their paper for recycling at a local mill in Kent. Then it buys back their own, now recycled, paper for the office. It is less hassle and cost saving for the company and guarantees a buyer of the recycled paper. Bioregional explains that "it is important, not only to recycle your waste paper, but also to close the loop by buying paper made from your recycled waste. This is because there needs to be a stable market for recycled products so that it is economically viable to collect and recycle the waste. So the more people who buy recycled products — the cheaper it becomes to get your waste recycled".all images by Bioregional

With this scheme, the environmental impact of the paper used can be reduced by 85%. Another advantage of joining the scheme is that it encourages companies to use less paper, which saves them money at the same time. Recycling paper in general has many other advantages such as reducing the amount of waste, protecting biodiversity by not having to cut as much of the world's forests, reducing the amount of fossil fuels used for the transportation of wood pulp and paper, avoiding the cutting of virgin rainforest and reducing the amount of chemicals used when making virgin paper.

Bioregional has noticed that joining Paper for London can "improve staff morale as employees are keen to see their organisations actively seeking to reduce their environmental impact". ::Local Paper for London